I think you should...

Saturday was the big housewarming, the day that has had us motivated for the last month (I am pretty sure nothing major will be getting done on the house this week, can we say "bu-urr-ned out!)

Thursday night our friends Ted and Krista showed up and Friday Josh and Jill joined us. So Friday night turned out to be a pre-housewarming party with a very interesting game of Mexican Train. These four awesome friends helped us shop, clean, put in new bark, and they put up with my crazy cleaning attack on the house before everyone arrived (imagine 6 people and 5 dogs trying to get ready for a bunch of people to arrive while I have the entire kitchen and hallway blocked so that I can mop, while reminding them all to make their beds and clean up there stuff, I hope they will forgive me and come back again someday).

The party was a great success! We counted almost 50 guests who came and went throughout the day. Folks started arriving at noon and we didn't get them out until 1:00 in the morning! It was a great day and it was really fun to share our home with all our friends. I think our favorite part was hearing all the suggestions of what we should do next. The favorite subject was the giant sandpit in our backyard, aka "wading pool". I like to call it "the huge hole in my backyard that the stupid people before us dug." Suggestions included:

An above ground swimming pool (not bad, other than it would block the double gate where you can drive into the backyard).

A swingset (I thought this was great until my friend Megan pointed out that we would be the creepy couple with no children but a swingset..."come here little kiddie")

A hot tub (too much work for me!)

Add some trucks and make it a sandbox (not a bad idea, our niece, Ariel, loved it when she was over, plus this is easy and CHEAP).

Put a swimming pool in with a zip-line from the deck to the pool (okay, maybe you should drink some water for a while).

A garden (not a bad suggestion, but not really the best place for a garden).

Other suggestions for our house included:

Building a rock back for our fireplace to replace the wood.
Adding trees in very specific places (it was a hot day, people were looking for shade).
Taking down our bees nests (okay so we never look up at the eaves of the house, and we are trying to take care of that now that we are aware of them).
Rebuilding our deck (yes, that would be the dream)
Adding children (I guess then we wouldn't be the creepy couple with the swing set).
Building a bar under the deck (okay this one might be a winner!)

We had such a great time seeing all our family and friends and sharing our home with them. We may have to make this a yearly event, people can see all the progress we have made each year. I am sorry I don't have any pictures to share, I took two, and it was dark, so I was a lame-o with the camera this weekend. Hope everyone who couldn't make it had a fabulous weekend and for everyone who was there, thank you for everything, it was so fun!